HarrisWalz.com Domain Drama Ducks Question of Cybersquatting Law

The sale of the HarrisWalz.com internet domain—by the same trademark lawyer who sold ClintonKaine.com in 2016—creates little risk of litigation even as it flirts with legal and ethical lines around cybersquatting.

Jeremy Green Eche registered the HarrisWalz domain in 2020, along with several other combinations involving then-prospective vice president Kamala Harris, correctly anticipating she could become a future Democratic Party presidential nominee. On Aug. 6, the day Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, a buyer paid Eche $15,000 for the domain.

Eche’s maneuvering runs up against federal anti-cybersquatting law, which is designed to prevent bad-faith registrations of domains to hold brands—and names—hostage for a ransom. While the core of cybersquatting law focuses on trademarks, another provision bars any registration that “consists of the name of another living person” without their consent and “with the specific intent to profit” from its sale.

Eche, who said he’s a member of the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, denied being profit-driven, noting the relatively low $15,000 price he put on both the Harris and Clinton domains.

“When I hit the jackpot, it happens to be profitable,” he said. “Fundamentally for me it’s just a hobby, something I enjoy doing.”

It’s also “part of a guerrilla marketing campaign” primarily designed to draw attention to his trademark registration business, JPG Legal LLC.

But his activities flout the law, said trademark attorney David J. Steele of Tucker Ellis LLP, who focuses on online infringement and cybersquatting. While the First Amendment would protect Eche if he’d been using the domains to make political statements, his own comments make clear that “that’s obviously not what we have here,” Steele said.

“His quotes are quite damning,” Steele said. “He’s clearly articulating his intent, and his intent was to register the name of another living person” and to make money on a sale of the domain.

Steele said Eche had probably calculated—correctly—that litigation against him would be impractical. Taking a case to federal court would have been more expensive than paying Eche’s price, and arbitration would be too slow to represent a practical solution for the campaign, he said.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Unsavory’

Domains are registered on a “first come, first served” basis, and there’s not necessarily “a predisposition against prospecting,” trademark attorney Joel Feldman of Greenberg Traurig LLP said. Disputes over domains are usually handled in arbitration under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) set by the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers because it’s faster and cheaper than a lawsuit—cases take about two months and cost about $5,000 to $7,000, he said.

UDRP guidelines would require the Harris-Walz campaign to show it had trademark rights in the domain, that Eche didn’t, and that he had registered the mark in bad faith with intent to profit.

The policy doesn’t automatically treat names as trademarks, Feldman said. It’s also not automatic that Eche selling the domain proves bad faith, and $15,000 wouldn’t necessarily demonstrate “intent to profit” given the cost of registering dozens of domains, he added. Eche said he spent $600 during the 2016 election cycle and $3,000 during this one.

“I don’t think it’s a slam dunk,” Feldman said.

Steele agreed that the campaign would lose under the brand-focused UDRP rules, as it would be a “square peg in a round hole.” It’d have more success in a lawsuit, he said, as US federal law on registering names is more explicit. Intent to profit is also legally different under US law, where it’s a term of art into which Eche’s behavior squarely fits, he added.

“I would be surprised if they failed to get a temporary restraining order,” Steele said, also noting federal law allows for the possibility of recovering attorney fees.

Steele still would have advised against litigating, however, because getting the TRO alone would cost more than Eche’s asking price, and sizable statutory damages available for trademark-based squatting likely would be off the table. Still, the tactic didn’t sit well with him, especially given Eche’s profession.

“I think it’s unlawful. I think it’s unsavory. I think it’s unethical,” Steele said. “Congress passed a law that says, ‘Don’t do this,’ and this guy said, ‘I’m doing this.’”

‘More Important Than Money’

Eche, who said his legal practice doesn’t specialize in cybersquatting, pushed back in a post-interview email on any suggestion that his conduct was illegal. HarrisWalz.com doesn’t “consist of the name of another living person” as the law states, but rather those of two people—though Steele said the factor of it being “two names won’t save him.”

Walz and Harris wouldn’t have had common law trademark rights in any theoretical mark on the combination of their names until his selection as her running mate last week, Eche said.

Eche said he believes the law was primarily designed to protect people from “identity theft or blackmail,” and insisted selling the domains wasn’t his primary purpose for registering them. He noted that before he sold it, ClintonKaine.com hosted his “Hillary Potter” political comic—which was shown and described on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC in a lighthearted segment, as well as having been featured on other outlets.

“This was much more important to me than the money from the sale,” he said, adding he spent a “significant amount of money” re-purchasing ClintonKaine.com last week. “That the primary uses of these websites for me have been as art projects supports the idea that I didn’t register them in bad faith.”

He didn’t have as much time to design something for the Harris-Walz domain, he said, but he put their names in black Arial type on a lime-green background—an “album cover parody” of the British singer Charli XCX’s recent release “Brat,” which has become a pop-culture phenomenon and aesthetic embraced by the Harris campaign.

The buyer of HarrisWalz.com expressed a desire to avoid a repeat of eight years ago, he said, when ClintonKaine.com was purchased by advocates for Donald Trump.

Eche, like Steele and Feldman, noted the impracticality of litigation.

Feldman also said the value of the particular domain might not be that high anyway; the campaign could likely achieve all its purposes using alternatives like HarrisWalz2024 and through search-engine optimization.

Even then, Feldman suggested the stakes may simply not be that high.

“Who goes to a campaign website anyway?” he asked.